Note 20 — Chapter VI

It is most improbable that he should be identified with Damiḳ-ilishu, the last king of the earlier Dynasty of Nîsin, who perished one hundred and thirty-seven years before this time. It is true that Nabonidus, to judge from his building-inscriptions, evinces an interest in the past, but in many ways he was a unique monarch and he lived in a later age. These early date-formulæ, on the other hand, always refer to contemporaneous events, not to matters of archæological interest. We know definitely that Iluma-ilum (the first Sea-Country king) was the contemporary of Samsu-iluna and Abi-eshu', and it is not unreasonable to find a reference to Damiḳ-ilishu (the third Sea-Country king) in the last year of Ammi-ditana, Abi-eshu's son. Granting this assumption, there follows the important inference that the exceptionally long period of one hundred and fifteen years, assigned by the Kings' List to the reigns of the first two kings of the Sea-Country, is a little exaggerated. The accuracy of some of the longer figures assigned in the List to kings of this dynasty has long been called in question (cf. "Chronicles," I., pp. 111 ff., and see above, p. 106), and the synchronism justifies this doubt. While the historical character of the Second Dynasty has been amply confirmed, we must not regard the total duration assigned to it in the Kings' List as more than approximately correct. Under these circumstances detailed dates have not been assigned to members of that dynasty in the Dynastic List of Kings; see Appendix II., p. 320.